Desperation

“The boss,” Steve said softly.

Aheavy thud seemed to run directly beneath them, a muffled battering-ram of sound. The truck began to shiver like a frightened dog. Steve heard broken rock and gravel begin to slide. He looked out his window and saw, in the dying glare of the blast, black nets of PVC pipe-emitters and distribution heads-sliding down the pit-face. The porphyry was in motion. China Pit was falling in on itself.

“Oh my God, we’re go

“Well, let’s see,” Steve said. “Hang on.”

He jammed the gas-pedal to the floor-it didn’t have far to go, either-and the truck’s engine responded with an angry scream. Almost there, honey, he thought at it.

Almost there, come on, work with me, beautiful, be there for me—That battering-ram rumble went on and on beneath them, seeming at one moment to fade, then coming back like a wave-form. As they reached the rim of the pit, Steve saw a boulder the size of a gas station go bouncing down the slope on their right. And, more ominous than the rumble from below them, he heard a growing whisper from directly beneath them. It was, Steve knew, the gravel surface of the road. The truck was northbound; the road was headed south. In only a few moments it would collapse down into the pit like a dropped carpet-ru

“Run, you bitch!” he screamed, pounding on the wheel with his left fist. “Run for me!

Now! Now!”

The Ryder truck surged over the rim of the pit like a clumsy yellownosed dinosaur. For a moment the issue was still in doubt, as the crumbled earth under the rear wheels ran out and the truck wallowed first sideways and then backward.

“Go!” Cynthia screamed. She sat forward, clutching the dashboard. “Oh please go! For God’s sake get us out of h-”

She was thrown back in the seat as the wheels found purchase again. Just enough. For a moment the headlights went on stabbing at the lightening sky, and then they were rushing across the rim, headed north. From behind them, out of the pit, rose an endless flume of dust, as if the ear-lier freak storm had started up all over again, only con-fined to.this one location. It rose in the sky like a pyre.

The trip down the north side of the embankment was less adventurous. By the time thcy were ru

Steve jammed on the brakes just past the bodega, at the south end of Desperation’s Main Street.

“Holy shit,” Cynthia murmured in a low voice.

“Mother Machree,” Mary said, and put a hand to her temple, as if her head hurt.

Steve could say nothing at all.

Until now he and Cynthia had only seen Desperation in the dark, or through veils of blowing sand, and what they had seen had been glimpsed in frantic little snatches, their perceptions honed to a narrow focus by the mortal sim-plicities of survival. When you were trying to stay alive, you just saw what you had to see; the rest went by the board.

Now, however, he was seeing it all.

The wide street was empty except for one lazily blowing tumbleweed. The sidewalks were drifted deep with sand-drifted completely under in places. Broken windowglass twinkled here and there. Trash had blown everywhere. Signs had fallen down. Powerlines lay snarled in the street like broken distributor beads. And The American West’s marquee now lay in the street like a grand old yacht that has finally gone on the rocks. The one remaining letter-a large black R-had finally fallen off.

And everywhere there were dead animals, as if some lethal chemical spill had taken place. He saw scores of coyotes, and from the doorway of Bud’s Suds there ran a long, curving pigtail of dead rats, some half-covered with the sand skirling about in a light morning breeze. Dead scorpions lay on the fallen leprechaun weathervane. They looked to Steve like shipwreck survivors who had died badly on a barren island. Buzzards lay in the Street and on the roofs like dropped heaps of soot.

“And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about,” David said. His voice was dead, expressionless. “And you shall say, ‘Take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount.’”

Steve looked into his rearview mirror, saw the embank—ment of the China Pit looming against the brightening sky, saw the dust still pouring out of its sterile caldera, and shuddered.

“‘Go not up into the mount, or touch the border of at whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death: There shall not be a band touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through. Whether it be beast or man, it shall not live.’ “The boy looked up at Mary, and his face began to shiver apart and become human. His eyes filled with tears.

“David-” she began.

“I’m alone. Do you get it. We came upon the mountain and God slaughtered them all.

My family. Now I’m alone.”

She put her arms around him and pressed his face against her.

“Say, Chief,” Cynthia said, and put a hand on Steve s arm. “Let’s blow this shithole of a town and find us a cold beer, what do you say.”

Highway 50 agaIn.

“Down thisway,” Mary said. ‘We’re close now.”

They had passed the Carvers’ RV. David bad turned his face against Mary’s breasts again as they approached it, and she put her arms around his head and held him. For almost five minutes he didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe. The only way she could tell for sure that he was alive was by the feel of his tears, slow and hot, wetting her shirt—In a way she was glad to feel them, thought them a good sign.

The storm had also struck the highway, she saw; sand covered it completely in places, and Steve had to wallow the Ryder truck through several drifts in low gear.

“Would they have closed it.” Cynthia asked Steve once. “The cops. Nevada Public Works. Whatever.”

He shook his head. “Probably not. But you can bet there wasn’t much of anyone out last night-lots of inter-state truckers holed up in Ely and Austin.”

“There it is!” Mary cried, and pointed at a sunstar twin-kling about a mile ahead of them.

Three minutes later they were pulling up to Deirdre’s Acura. “Do you want to come in the car with me, David.” she asked. “Assuming the damned thing will even start, that is.”

David shrugged.

“The cop let you keep your keys.” Cynthia asked.

“No, but if I’m lucky…

She hopped out of the truck, landed in a loose dune of sand, and made her way to the car.

Looking at it brought Peter back in a rush-Peter, who had been so goddamned, absurdly proud of his James Dickey monograph, never guessing that the pla

The car doubled in her sight, then blurred into prisms.

Chest hitching, she wiped an arm across her eyes, then knelt and felt around under the front bumper. At first she couldn’t find what she was looking for and it all seemed like too much. Why did she want to follow the Ryder truck to Austin in this car, anyway.

Surrounded by memories. By Peter.

She laid her cheek against the bumper-soon it would be too hot to touch, but for now it was still night-cool—and let herself cry.

She felt a hand touch hers, tentatively, and looked around. David was standing there, his gaunt, too-old face hanging over a slim boy’s chest in a bloodstained baseball tee-shirt.

He looked at her solemnly, not quite holding her hand but touching her fingers with his, as if he would like to hold it.

“What’s wrong, Mary.”

“I can’t find the little box,” she said, and pulled in a large, watery sniff. “The little magnetic box with the spare key in it. It was under the front bumper, but I guess it must have fallen off. Or maybe the boys who took our license plate took that, too.” Her mouth twisted and she began to cry again.